Corruption hits North-East and cripples cricket

Cricket in the northeastern states is reeling under blatant corruption.
The fraud ranges from the misuse of board funds meant for the development of the game to allegations of officials accepting bribes to field unauthorised players.

Cricket in the northeastern states is reeling under blatant corruption.

The fraud ranges from the misuse of board funds meant for the development of the game to allegations of officials accepting bribes to field unauthorised players.

The corruption has apparently been going on for a few years, but it has either gone unnoticed or the board has deliberately not taken note of it. The issue was finally raised at a Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) working committee meeting, following which the board president Shashank Manohar asked BCCI chief administrative officer Ratnakar Shetty to probe the mess.

The officials under the scanner, however, have gone scot free with just a slap on their wrists-crucially, a little over a month before the annual general body meeting of the BCCI. A major issue pertains to the misuse of the BCCI grants. The Arunachal Cricket Association (ACA), an affiliate member of the board, seems the biggest culprit as its secretary purchased a piece of land for Rs 25 lakh without authorisation.

On the other hand, secretary of the Sikkim Cricket Association (SCA), an associate board member, is slapped with an allegation of accepting money from players who are not eligible to represent the state.

Arindam Ganguly, who heads the 'special committee for the development of cricket in northeastern states', was apparently the first one to raise the issue, as per the minutes of the working committee meeting at which it was discussed.

According to Ganguly, ACA secretary Tado Kohli withdrew Rs 25 lakh without authorisation from the Rs 50 lakh BCCI grant, purchased a piece of land without sanction, and failed to produce the land-related documents when the BCCI asked for them.

"Kohli withdrew Rs 25 lakh and there was no accountability," Ganguly told Mail Today. Stanley Saldanha, managergame development with BCCI, also said that Kohli had purchased the land illegally. "The Rs 50 lakh grant that the BCCI is giving to the northeastern states is for development of the game and not for purchase of land," the former first-class player told Mail Today.

The BCCI last year announced a grant of Rs 50 lakh each to Sikkim, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh as part of its New Area Development Scheme. Kohli could not be contacted as several calls to his mobile and landline numbers went unanswered.

Ganguly also said that after Kohli was pulled up with the unauthorised withdrawal of money from a bank account, he has returned the money. "We found some discrepancies with the ACA. They have no sense of an organisation or how to run their cricket with more funds. But Kohli has since deposited the money back into the bank account," he said.

Despite the wrongdoing, Kohli has gone scot free. "We can punish the association, but our aim is to develop their cricket," said Ganguly. "My committee is meeting this month and all these things will be raised then. There are so many loopholes in the organisation." Saldanha said that the BCCI is "monitoring the situation" more closely now.

The allegation against Sikkim secretary Tikka Subba is of not paying the under-22 CK Nayudu Trophy players their match fees despite claiming the money from the board.

As per the minutes of the working committee, Shetty levelled this allegation based on the reports of board-appointed match referees who officiated Sikkim's matches while Ganguly blamed him for accepting "bribes" from outstation players.

Supporting Shetty at the same meeting, Anurag Thakur, president of the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association, said that he too had authentic information that in a particular CK Nayudu match, "most of the players were from outside Sikkim". Thakur also alleged that Subba was "allegedly taking money from the players to include them in the board matches", an allegation that Ganguly supported.

"So many players have made the complaint to me and the board. They have called players from Bengal and elsewhere and taken bribes from them (to include them in the team). We will discuss all this at our meeting and if they issue is not sorted out, we'll raise the issue at next month's BCCI AGM," said Ganguly.

Subba admitted that players from outside Sikkim have represented the state. "There have only been three-four players who played in the under-22 tournament," he said, without sounding convincing.

Match referees who have officiated Sikkim's matches said they had written in their reports that most players had been "outsiders". "In one case, players in the XI didn't know the names of their teammates. These players arrive on the match day and they don't attend camps," disclosed one of the referees.

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